


The Silent Stars Go By

by Lirazel



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-22
Updated: 2008-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-05 01:48:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/36454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lirazel/pseuds/Lirazel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>  S<em>he leans her forehead against the cool glass of the window and watches the stars.</em>An angsty-fluffy Christmas fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Silent Stars Go By

When she hears, she doesn’t understand. Not because resurrections are so rare an occurrence in her world—they aren’t, not really—but because she knows what it’s like. She knows what it’s like to be returned from the dead when you thought you were finished, when you thought you’d infused your life with meaning by dying in the most self-sacrificial way possible, when you’d attained pure selflessness (_love_) and just wanted to rest. She knows what it was like to be ripped away from the rest that was reward, like being jerked from a warm, cozy bed and finding yourself naked and shivering in a dark, dank alley somewhere (_she knows_). Knows how you don’t know who you are or who you should be or if you even want to be you at all. Knows how much she needed someone to be there who would tell her that those feelings are okay, but that life is still worth living.

And if he knows all that now, too—if he’s going through all that now, the way she did—how could he possibly not want her to be there with him?

For the first time, she really lets herself wonder if he actually meant those words to her in the Hellmouth. _No you don’t, but thanks for saying it._ Those words were so horrific that she couldn’t take them literally. She was certain that he’d been giving her an out, pushing her to go, telling her it would be okay to go and live her life fully, honestly, the way she’d always wanted to. The words were a cue, to let her know the next appropriate action, to free her body from the paralysis that froze her there in front of him, to give her the strength to run. _Of course_ that’s what he meant.

Because any other conclusion…it just didn’t bear thinking about.

Only now she can’t get it out of her mind, that other conclusion, not for one single moment because she’s beginning to think it’s the only explanation. He couldn’t have misunderstood her, could he? Couldn’t have really believed that she didn’t love him? She thought she’d made it so clear, those last few months after she rescued him from the First, when he lived in her home and patrolled by her side and propped up her weary soul. Thought that the little touches, the way she looked at him (_she could feel her own solemnity shining out of her eyes, that intensity she couldn’t verbalize but couldn’t keep boxed away inside, either_), the way she focused all of her energy on saving the world and on him, well, she’d thought that that would speak for itself. He _knows_ she’s not good with words, that she only messes things up when she tries to verbalize her emotions. So how could he not see that those were her ways of telling him, over and over and over again, that she loved him? He knew her, then, better than anyone else, knew how to read her when she couldn’t even read herself (_somehow he was fluent in Buffy when she was still struggling with the basics of her own grammar_), and wouldn’t he be able to read that, too? She’d had to believe that he could.

He _did_.

But even if…even if he hadn’t believed that she loved him (_how could he not? When she stood there before him, burning up from the inside with love for him?_), surely he wouldn’t think she would turn him away?

She _knows_. Knows what it was all like. And she knows how much she had needed him. Even if she took and twisted what he tried to offer her into something small and dark and ugly (_something broken and half-alive, which was so, so much worse than his deadness_), she had needed him then. Just as he must certainly need her now. He’s with _Angel_ of all people, and even though she knows that Angel’s people are good (_despite her high school feelings about Cordelia, despite Giles’s warning now about corruption_), they can’t possibly be what he needs them to be. They don’t care about him the way she does; no one can be there for him the way she can (_the way she wants to be_). He must need her. Even leaving aside romantic love, they’ve been through so much, been so many things for each other that surely, _surely_ he would know that she would want to give him whatever she could during this time? (_Doesn’t he?_)

\--

The moment she hears, she packs a bag. She goes (_to him_).

\--

The flight is long, but she doesn’t pull out her iPod or a magazine, doesn’t nap or watch the in-flight movie.

Instead, she leans her forehead against the cool glass of the window and watches the stars.

\--

Angel’s eyes go wide when she strides into the room, and she isn’t surprised. She looks at him, and she feels so many things: anger and affection and exasperation and disappointment. Mostly disappointment (_though she thinks that’s more with herself than with anyone else_), because how could he not tell her? No matter his history with Spike, he’s not heartless, and wouldn’t he be able to see how much Spike needs her (_how much she needs to be there for him?_)?

But then, he doesn’t know. How could he, when she hadn’t told him? _(“He’s in my heart?” Could she have vagued that up any more?_) She hadn’t told anyone. No one really knows, not Dawn or Willow or Xander or Giles (_not even Spike himself, apparently, though she doesn’t let herself think of that_), because she hasn’t told anyone. Everything they were and did and went through…it’s too _much_, too much a part of her for her to be able to talk about it with anyone. And after, after he was gone, she’d cherished it, treasured it in her heart, and she unpacks the memories only in private, when she can pore over them like well-worn photographs, each one precious. No one else could understand, and to try to make them would only taint it.

So Angel couldn’t have known about those quiet nights on the porch right after she came back, flailing and floundering in the darkbright hardformless freezingburning (_heaven is perfect balance, the middle road_) reality she’d been forced back into. Spike hadn’t been able to banish all of that (_no one could do that_), but for a moment, he’d made it bearable. He didn’t take away any of the pain: it was like going to the doctor’s office for shots when she was a little girl, clinging helplessly to Mom’s hand. Mom’s hand in her own didn’t make the shot hurt any less, but that reassurance wrapped tight around Buffy’s own hand made it bearable (_she sometimes thinks that that’s what love is, being lonely_ together—_because no one’s ever not lonely—and the peace that comes from knowing you aren’t alone in being lonely. Spike always got that_).

He’s got that sad puppy look on his face that still makes her heart ache for him (_he knows loneliness, better than just about anyone, but she doesn’t know if he’s figured out yet that another person can’t banish that entirely. Maybe he has, these years they’ve been apart. She hopes so. She wants that for him. Because until you recognize that someone else can’t fix your problems for you, you can’t ever really love, and she wants him to love, she wants him to be loved_), but he gives her instructions without much prompting. She tells him she’ll talk to him later.

\--

She can imagine how much Spike must hate this place. Fluorescent lighting (“_Some demons love 'em. The way they vibrate makes the skin twitch._”), poncey lawyers in suits, Angel’s scent probably all over the place (_back in the early days, with Oz, with Angel, she and Willow had once talked about how it was the scent-thing, more than any physical transformation into Other that was really unsettling about their boyfriends_). Spike is meant for oriental rugs and lots and lots of candles (_she always wondered how, in the rougher moments of the “Buffy and Spike Sexcapades,” as Dawn calls them, they never knocked any of those candles over, never set him on fire. But, as she would be the first to admit, he’s hard to kill_), the clean smell of earth and the buzz of cable television. She can picture him easily in dark alleys, in her Mom’s kitchen, in a tiny Sunnydale church, in the back room of a bar, in graveyards, in Xander’s basement, in Giles’s bathroom. Can picture him in opera houses and palaces, in warehouses and hovels. She never could have pictured him in a modern office building. This is not his world, and she knows it.

The place is hung with Christmas decorations—garlands of fake holly, slightly sinister-looking Santas laughing down from the walls (_Spike always swore Santa Claus was a demon, and she pretended to be very grumpy to keep from laughing hysterically when he insisted_), mistletoe over random doorways, the spray-on snow coating the windows—but it doesn’t belong; it sets her on edge. It’s as unnatural to her as Spike in that terrible blue shirt the night he told her about his soul, and she decides that she hates this place as much as she’s certain he does.

They have that in common, and that doesn’t surprise her.

\--

She finds him in what was probably, at one point, a copy room. She can still see the indention in the beige carpet (_beige, like everything in this place—beige carpet, beige walls, beige furniture—he’s been every color there ever was: dark as midnight, crimson as blood, white as light in his last moments, but he’s never, ever been beige_) where the copier once sat. It’s empty now, except for him, curled up in the corner (_looking small, so small—she always forgot how small he was because when she was with him, she felt safe_), and she flashes back to a high school basement, to a Spike who didn’t know how to live with a soul and a Buffy who didn’t know how to help him. He’s wrapped in leather, though, this time, and she isn’t sure whether it’s a comfort to him or a burden. Knowing him (_all his beautiful, evil contradictions_), it’s probably both.

But then he looks up, and this isn’t the Spike she remembers from the basement. This isn’t the Spike she remembers from the Hellmouth or from the nights in his crypt or patrols in the graveyard or truces in her mom’s living room. This is a Spike she’s not quite sure she’s ever seen before, and it doesn’t surprise her that he’s found one more version of himself.

He isn’t crazy or wracked with guilt. Not numb, either, like she was after.

He isn’t even surprised to see her, which is perhaps more telling than anything else.

The corner of his mouth jerks up, a ghost of the smirk he used to toss her, and it hurts her because she knows it hurts him. His eyes aren’t dead, as she knows hers were, but they’re kind of far away, and she wonders if she’ll be able to catch up with him.

She has to try.

She leans her back against the wall, slides down to the ground beside him.

“Hey,” she says softly.

\--

She expected she’d be angry with him. Or annoyed or exasperated or hurt or betrayed. After all, he’s been back, and he hasn’t come to her. Not that he could—she gets the whole incorporeal thing. Or she doesn’t, really, but it doesn’t matter. He could have gotten someone to call. Surely he must have known she’d want him to.

__

No, don’t start that again, Buffy Anne.__

She expected her first question to be, “Why didn’t you let me know?” But seeing him, like this, she can’t form those words (_questions are too rough_).

So she says instead, “I missed you,” and thinks, for the second time since she’s known him, she’s said the right thing to him (_the first time in her basement, him pulling against the chains and trying to convince her that he was so much less than he was, and she finally said the words he’d been needing to hear all along_).

He just looks at her. Then, “Did you now?”

It sounds to her like he’s trying to get back to their banter, and oh, wouldn’t that be easier? That always came so very easily, as easily as their fights (_as easily as their dance_). She could go with it, take the easy way out (_“Does it have to mean something?”_) as she so often has (_which is stupid because they both know the whole point of them is that it never came easy and that’s what makes it worth working for_). But she sees now that that is the coward’s way (_she can face down hellgods, throw herself towards death, take on the ultimate evil, but she knows she’s always been too much of a coward to be honest about her own emotions_), and with his beautiful, stupid bravery there in the Hellmouth (_and for so long before_), he deserves to have someone be brave for him now.

“Very much. Every day.”

The look he gives her is the one she remembers from the night she invited him into her home (_“I know I’m a monster, but you treat me like a man…”_), from the time she placed his death sentence in his hand and called him a Champion (_“Been called a lot of things in my time….”_), only a little less. Not quite so overwhelming, not quite so naked. She gets that. It’s hard, coming back to this world: emotions are so sharp and overwhelming, and on the rare occasions when she actually felt them (_almost_ _always with him or with her sister_), she thought they might fill her lungs and drown her (_but even that was preferable to numbness_).

She reaches out a hand, slips it into his. The cold, calloused skin feels the same next to hers, and after a long moment he curls his own fingers around hers, and she feels that strength he always wanted to give her.

“Didn’t you miss me, too?” She tries to make the words teasing, but they come out a little too hopeful (_needy_). She winces. She doesn’t want him to feel like it’s all about her. It’s always been all about her, but she’s an adult now. Each step she took away from him through the Hellmouth, through the high school, on the roofs of those buildings was one step further into maturity. The battle was hard-won, but worth it.

__

No slipping back now.__

__

__

He gives her another look, his eyebrow arched (_though not as high as before—he looks so _tired), the one he used to give her on occasion, the one he gave Xander all the time, the one that says: are you really as dumb as all that?

 

She flushes, looks down at their hands, her gold against his ivory. She always thought they were beautiful together.

She feels his other hand brush her cheek, soft and _right_, and meets his eyes again. “Course I missed you, luv. Very much. Every day.”

She smiles then, sits up a little straighter. “I want to help you.”

He blinks, confused by her sudden enthusiasm. “Help me with what?”

“With adjusting to coming back to life again, of course.”

“Still dead, pet.”

“You know what I mean. It’s so _hard_. I don’t want you to be alone. I want you to have someone to care about you, like I did.”

She can’t read his face, and that startles her. Everything he felt was always written right there, so very easy to read. She just never took the time to actually read it.

__

I will now.__

“Was a bit different for you than it was for me, pet. You had to return your halo, and I don’t imagine you had an easy time of it giving the shiny back. I was just…one minute watching the mouth o’ hell fall down around me, next in himself’s office. Just jarrin’, a bit.”

“Jarring—right. And I want to help. Only this time we won’t turn it into something ugly, okay? I mean, _I _won’t turn it into something ugly. I’ll be what you need me to be. I can be good to you.”

He shakes his head slowly, not in denial but in disbelief (_she knows how he feels—she never thought she’d say these words either_). “Always knew you could, luv.”

“And I _want_ to be. You’re here now. I don’t want to lose you again, not for any reason. Especially not because I hurt you.”

“Hey. You never lost me, luv.”

“Well, I deserved to. But not this time.”

He keeps staring at her like he’s never seen her before, and she realizes that maybe he hasn’t. This part of herself, she always kept compartmentalized. She let herself be tender, be gentle sometimes with Dawn—not as often as she should have, of course, but she’s getting better at it. In the early days, she’d been this way sometimes with Willow, too. But she hasn’t allowed herself to be like this with a man, not since Angel. She’d thought at the time that what she went through with the soul-losing and the killing him broke something inside her, made something crooked where it should have been straight, but she realizes now that this potential was here all along, only she’d been so scared to use it that she’d locked it away.

__

No longer.

“‘ppreciate all this, Slayer. But tomorrow’s Christmas. Shouldn’t you be with the Bit and all your friends?”

She bounces up, swings her legs underneath her so that she’s kneeling in front of him. “Don’t you see? That’s why I had to come _now_.”

He’s looking lost again, so she shoves her free hand through her hair and searches for words. They’ve always come hard for her, but she needs them now. She has to make him understand.

“That Christmas, the one after I came back, that may have been the hardest time I’ve ever known. Harder than right after Mom died, because then there was still Dawn to protect and Glory to think about and it was all so _fresh_—like right after you get wounded and the pain hasn’t caught up yet. But this was my first Christmas without her, and I missed her like the way your legs ache when you have growing pains, you know? So deepdeepdeep in the bone, and there isn’t one thing you can do to stop it? I missed her like that. And heaven like that. And we’d just…had our night in the house we tore down, and I was scared of you, of what I felt and didn’t feel for you and what it all meant. And Willow was all depressed about losing Tara and going through magic withdrawals or whatever, and Xander and Anya were all stressed and snippy about the wedding, and Giles was on the other side of the ocean, and Dawn was…well, I didn’t realize it at the time, I just thought she was whiny—but she was so _scared_ because she knew I didn’t want to be there and she was scared I’d try to leave again. It was _awful_. It was…” She shudders then. “I don’t want it to be like this for you.”

She can’t look at his eyes while she says this; she’s never been good at confession, and if she looks at him and sees that humbled, awed look in his eyes, she’ll break, shatter, weep and throw herself into his arms. And she can’t do that. She has to be the strong one now. For him.

“I know that Christmas doesn’t mean anything to you. That it doesn’t mean anything to vampires. But it means something to me. And just the thought of you being alone and maybe in pain so far away…I had to come, don’t you see? I _had_ to.”

He leans forward then, startles her into looking up at him, and he very gently kisses the tears that are slipping down her cheeks, little kisses soft as snowflakes, kisses of a kind she hadn’t known he could give (_hadn’t_ _known she could receive_). “Of course, my sweet girl. ‘S why I love you, innit? Can’t be sittin’ at home, all safe and warm, no matter how much you deserve it, not when you know there’s someone out there hurtin’. ‘S your curse, and your blessing, too. Your grace.”

She smiles again, wide and beatific, even as tears continue to slid down, and she can almost feel herself glowing, light pouring out of her heart (_light is love_), light she wants to share with him.

He catches her face in his hands, and she loves the way it feels there. Loves even more that he doesn’t have to force her gaze to his; for once, she can meet it unwaveringly. He murmurs, “‘You have seen sunshine and rain at once. Her smiles and tears were like a better way…’”

She knows he’s quoting something from the way his accent evens out, becomes more Giles-like, but she has no idea what. “What?”

“‘Sorrow would be a rarity most beloved if all could so become it.’ My beautiful girl….” He leans forward, and her heart leaps up into her throat. Surely he’ll kiss her now.

But then he stops, abruptly, and her face feels cold where his hands once were. She blinks, confused. “Spike? What…?”

He’s peering into her eyes with that old intensity that used to frighten her, the kind that made her struggle into her clothes and run out his crypt (_it made her feel so naked in ways she wasn’t prepared to face_). He’s trying to see something, she doesn’t know what; surely everything important she’s already told him in her smile?

“Are you, Buffy? Are you…my…?”

He can’t even say it. And she realizes that what she most feared was true all along: he wasn’t _sure_. Down in the Hellmouth, he wanted to believe her, maybe believed her _in that moment_, but he wasn’t sure of what it would mean after.

She will take that uncertainty away from him if it’s the last thing she ever does.

This time she leans forward, cups his face in her hands. “Yes, Spike. I’m yours. If…you want me.”

Suddenly he’s kissing her, pressing her up against the beige wall, but it isn’t like any of the times he kissed her before. It’s firm but gentle, pure but full of fire, and most of all, it’s promise.

He pulls back, rests his forehead against hers, and they’re doing that thing where they gasp in sync and she wants to weep again because this is new, but so familiar and so _right_.

“Enough of that now,” he says. “Gonna do this right this time, right?”

“Right. Like this.” She slides around beside him, pulls head his down to her shoulder. Runs her fingers through his hair, knows his eyes are sinking closed. Feels the weariness drain out of him, the burden of this world slipping from his shoulders, and she thinks that she’s finally found something to give him. Love is her gift. And now she can give it to him.

And then she whispers to him, whispers all the ways she wants to help him, to be there for him, to believe in him. Whispers all the things she wants to be for him, with him. Whispers of all the things they’ll do, places they’ll visit, people they’ll meet.

Whispers that they’ll make things right again—together—because that’s what they do.

\--

They walk through the streets, her cheek resting on his shoulder, his arm secure around her waist, but they don’t see the flashing colored Christmas lights wrapped around the trunks of palms or the blow-up Santas in yards.

Because they’re looking up, and somehow, even with L.A.’s lights glaring bright around them, they can still see the stars, a snowfall of tiny white lights wheeling silently through the sky. She thinks of nights spent on her back porch, silence and moonlight between them, of nights patrolling under this same sky (_one thing she treasures—and constantly surprises people with—is her encyclopedic knowledge of the constellations. She doesn’t know why everyone’s so astonished: night is her domain, starlight often her only companion, and she knows the name of every one_). She thinks of when she was a little girl, when she believed that stars were the holes in the floor of heaven that let the light shine through (_now that she’s been there and back again, she finds that she sort of still believes it_).

And just like all those times, the order and light above her whispers of meaning, the promise of purpose, and she’s certain that they’ll make it through this just as they have so many other moments of darkness and hope, despair and light.

\--

The stars guide the way home.

**Author's Note:**

> AU from AtS S5 "Destiny." In my world, Spike recorporealizes and has a bit of a harder time adjusting to the world again (resurrections are _hard_. Buffy, Angel, and Darla have all taught us that). Oh, and the quote is from _King Lear_.


End file.
